Page 54 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

Apu in Fiction and Film 41

optimistic outlook. (In Ray’s later famine film, Distant Thunder,
also based on a novel by Banerji, only one corpse is actually
shown on screen.)
With the final film, The World of Apu, there is little point in
comparing it with the novel Aparajito in any detail. Both film
and novel centre on the marriage of Apu and Aparna, acciden-
tally arranged by Pulu, Apu’s friend and Aparna’s cousin; but
otherwise the two works differ radically in story, structure and
mood. Consider a few crucial examples. Apu’s impoverished gar-
ret above the steam and whistles of the railway yard, which opens
the film, was entirely Ray’s vivid creation, as was the pivotal scene
there in which an indignant Pulu bursts in and takes Apu out
for a meal. In the film, from the beginning Apu is already writ-
ing an autobiographical novel, which Pulu reads in manuscript
before he introduces his friend to Aparna, and which Apu dis-
cards in disillusion after the death of Aparna; in Banerji’s novel,
Apu begins writing his novel well after the death of Aparna,
which his childhood friend Lila enthusiastically reads before
it is eventually published. In the film, when Aparna’s brother
brings news of her death to Apu, a grief-stricken Apu punches
him in the face; in the novel it is the brother who breaks down,
and Apu who calmly asks him questions about his wife’s death.
Lastly, in the film, Apu’s son Kajal, whom he abandons after
Aparna’s death, at first truculently rejects his unknown father’s
overtures; whereas in the novel, Apu is immediately embraced
by Kajal with open arms.
Even the psychology of the wedding of Apu and Aparna is
very different in the film from that in the novel. In both cases,
the first bridegroom turns out to be mad. But in the film when
Pulu, desperate to help his young cousin, approaches Apu
on the river-bank and asks him to wed Aparna instead, Apu
sharply rejects him with the words: ‘Are you still living in the
Dark Ages?’ Then, upon reflection, observing the forlorn wed-
ding preparations, Apu does agree; he puts it to Pulu in a very
oblique way typical of Ray – by asking if Pulu can really get him

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